Freelance Brand and Marketing Planning & Project Manager

Job Description

Freelance Brand and Marketing Planning & Project Manager (until 27th March 2026)

Start Date: 9th February 2026

Initial Duration: 7 weeks (until Friday 27th March 2026)

Time commitment: Approximately 32 hours per week

Rate: £45 per hour

Help us deliver work that supports teachers and schools, by bringing clarity, structure and momentum to complex projects.

Oak National Academy is seeking an experienced freelance project manager to deliver a defined programme of brand, communications and school support work.

This task is focused on bringing clarity, structure and momentum to a set of time-bound projects. The work will involve planning activity, tracking progress, managing risks and ensuring delivery remains aligned with agreed objectives, timelines and budgets.

The freelancer will work independently, engaging with Oak stakeholders and external partners where relevant, and using their own expertise to shape how the work is delivered.

🔧 What You’ll Be Doing

• Develop and maintain clear project plans for agreed brand and communications activity, setting out tasks, timelines, dependencies and milestones

• Establish and maintain clarity on roles, responsibilities and decision-making for each project, ensuring contributors understand how their input fits into delivery

• Track project spend and liaise with Oak’s finance colleagues to support timely invoicing and payment processes

• Work with named project leads and external agencies to enable delivery of creative and marketing activity aligned with agreed objectives

• Coordinate project activity across contributors and facilitate structured check-ins to ensure work remains on track

• Maintain an up-to-date view of risks and issues, and communicate project health, decisions and next steps clearly

• Provide short, clear progress updates for senior stakeholders at agreed points

• Manage structured communication with external stakeholders, including partners

• Keep a clear record of key decisions, actions and approvals to support effective delivery

• Review existing planning and project approaches within the School Support function, where relevant to the agreed scope

• Make practical, proportionate recommendations to improve clarity and effectiveness

• Support delivery of agreed changes on a project basis, where required

🌱 What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years’ experience delivering complex projects end to end, where project management has been a core part of your role,

• Strong, practical project management capability, with familiarity and confidence using common project management frameworks, tools and processes to plan work, manage dependencies, risks and delivery.

• An ability to prioritise what matters most, balancing quality and pace and using proportionate planning to keep work moving.

• Experience working collaboratively across teams and with external partners and  communicating clearly

• A thoughtful, accountable and learning-focused approach, aligned with Oak’s values of trust, ownership, collaboration and continuous improvement.

Next steps

You’ll answer some questions – a few quick admin ones and four discipline-related ones. After the job closes, your answers will go through our sifting process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers.

If you are shortlisted, we’ll invite you to an interview remotely over Zoom. 

We are experiencing really good responses to our job adverts. This may lead us to closing the role early, so if you are considering applying, please get your application in early to avoid missing out.